Invading America. David Childs
has not been accorded the accolades deserved by the man who established the British Empire and had commanded the Authorized Version of the Bible to be translated and distributed. His wisdom is very apparent, even within the extremely verbose American Charters, for most of the near-fatal errors that affected the colonies were introduced by the Companies and not the King. The peculiar method of appointing and electing the original Council of Virginia, the emphasis on seeking for gold, the time spent in looking for a passage to the Pacific, the coronation of Powhatan, the demand for goods – all stemmed from the investors’ greed and not the King’s grant. In one thing only was James unhelpful, and that was in his objection to the ‘noxious weed’, tobacco, the production of which saved Virginia. Yet, even here, history might uphold the wisdom of the King: tobacco was to kill more of his successors’ subjects than ever did the Amerindians.
For as long as he felt able so to do, James indulged the Virginia Company and its investors, even altering their Charter: to impose better government; to provide more opportunities for settlers; to pursue bad debts; to include Bermuda, and, through its lottery, provide additional ways of raising money. In return he had seen nothing but bad management, bankruptcy and great loss of life. When the latter made headline news with the report of the massacre of 1622, the King was minded no longer to reform but to revoke. Following his reading of Nathaniel Butler’s exposé of Virginia at the time of the massacre, the critical views of which were independently supported by advisors whom he trusted, the King ordered, in May 1623, a Crown Commission to be established to investigate the Company’s affairs. There could only be one result, and on 24 May 1624 the Virginia Company’s Charter was revoked.
One year later, on 13 May 1625, the new King, Charles I, declared that:
to the end there may be one uniform course of Government in and through our Whole Monarchy, that the Government of the Colony of Virginia shall immediately depend upon Our Self, and not be committed to any Company or Corporation, to whom it may be proper to trust matters of Trade and Commerce, but cannot be fit or safe to communicate the ordering of State-Affairs, be they of never so mean consequence.
The age of the private Company had ended; the age of the royal colony had begun.
There are two Charters that are seldom mentioned among those that affected the development of English America. The first was the one which, on 31 December 1600, incorporated the British East India Company. Although many of the voyages that took place under its auspices ended tragically, the ships that returned safe home swamped the market with cloves, peppers, silks and saltpetre. When, in 1609, the books were closed on the combined results from this Company’s first two voyages, a profit of 95 per cent was declared. Nothing exported from Virginia could match that until tobacco became a major crop and furs a valuable catch. Certainly ship masts, staves, clapboard and sassafras could not compete. Those with money to invest – and many people, like Sir Thomas Smythe, were active in both the Virginia and the East India Companies – were far more likely to consider that, despite the shipwrecks and the seizures, trading voyages to the East Indies offered a better return on capital than did settler ships sailing to America. Nothing came of the other Charter, issued to Sir Robert Heath in 1629, but it is of note because it granted to this friend of King Charles the land lying between 31º and 36º North, the Carolinas, stretching well towards the region previously jealously and murderously protected by Spain (St Augustine was only sixty miles further south). As a statement of confidence in colonialism it would be hard to beat but, as it was never acted upon, it was never contended.
The Charters had been the unique way by which the English sovereign apportioned the new world to his or her subjects. It was a formulaic patent with little difference between that awarded to John Cabot in 1496 and that granted to Sir Robert Heath in 1629. All emphasized conquest, occupation and conversion. At the end of that long century a few square miles were occupied but not fully controlled, let alone conquered, and a few ‘barbarous men’ had been converted. The Charters presented to Cabot, Gilbert, Ralegh, Alexander, Heath and the northern Virginia Colony had come to nought; the three issued to the Virginia Company of London had proved unworkable; that for Maine, issued to Gorges and Mason, had led to a few huts being erected; Newfoundland would have struggled on without a Charter, as would have the settlement at Plymouth, while Massachusetts Bay guaranteed its success by taking the paperwork with it. Neither did the Charters of themselves address the needs of the invasion period about which its language was so up-beat. They were documents designed to ensure a quick return for the petitioners, not operational orders for invading and occupation forces. They should have been.
Map 2: The division of Virginia under the First Charter, 1606
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